On Apr 2, 2006, at 9:56 AM, Kelly Martin wrote:
On 4/1/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
Kelly, you seem to always ascribe bad faith to people for no reason other than the fact they disagree with you. I wish I had a solution to THAT problem.
Nonsense. I have never attributed bad faith to Geogre, Johnleemk, JayJG, Raul654, for example, despite disagreeing with them, in some cases quite vehemently.
The comments you so pithily dismissed as "assuming bad faith" are simply my observations on the political nature of the Wikipedia community. You apparently don't like those observations, and so you've accused me of assuming bad faith by making them. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
You made a blanket assertion that anyone who opposes "special administrator selection committees" are "more interested in Wikipedia as an social experiment" for no clear reason other than the fact that they oppose taking decision-making power out of the hands of the common contributor. While that's an admirable way to trivialize opposing points of view, it also marginalizes those of us who oppose that sort of cabalism *because* we want to write a comprehensive and accurate encyclopedia from the neutral point of view. Instead of addressing opposing views, the sorts of blanket assertions you're making serve only to dismiss them without consideration by attacking people's supposed motivations.
If that's not a textbook example of assumption of bad faith, ad hominem, and a straw man, I don't know what is.